Beating the Bracket: A Guide to the Midwest Region, Part II

The bottom half of the Midwest bracket contains a Cinderella that could potentially parlay a play-in game all the way to the Sweet Sixteen.

Red-hot Tennessee has two of the top 35 players, both of whom are NBA prospects, and they improved from 25th to 13th in Value Add the past month. They have good chance to win the play-in game over Iowa and then upset UMass and potentially even Duke.

Home Advantage: Michigan has a great path with two games in Milwaukee and then two more in Indianapolis.

The following are the Value Add Rankings for each player in the bottom half of the Midwest Region, their team’s seed, height, year in school, and which players are NBA prospects (all caps). The teams are Arizona St. (10-seed), Duke (3), Iowa (11), Massachusetts (6), Mercer (14), Michigan (2), Tennessee (11), Texas (7) and Wofford (15).

The items listed for the top few players on each team should be the biggest considerations along with injured players, the home advantage, and which team enters the tournament hot (which we define as improving the most at www.kenpom.com over the past month of the season). The system is a precise measurement of how many points a player adds to his team’s score per game over the player who takes his place. Every score (three-pointer, two-pointer or foul shot), assist, offensive rebound, foul drawn, etc. helps a team score while every turnover and missed shot costs the team points. On defense, every steal, blocked shot, defensive rebound, turnover forced, and opponent’s missed shot takes points off the board while every basket or offensive rebound allowed adds to the opponent’s score. The player’s offensive and defensive combination calculates together with the help of the stats at www.kenpom.com. How many points a player adds to his team’s score appears in the offensive category (shown as “off” in the table below), and his overall impact on points once defense is factored appears as “Total” on the table.

Bottom Midwest Bracket Players (teams in order they appear in bracket):